In Summation

Abacus snicking, I calculate

The accumulated total of

Teary pillows, full of

Feelings, each busy feeling.

They number too many.

Salt sleep soaked sockets

Subtract and divide me.

Propped up by mounds

Of pillows, suffocation seems

The neat simple solution.

Oh

Two = an irrational number.

The mathematical problem is

I swore off love,

Properly. The dramatic, repeated

Hand-on-heart kind

That somehow sticks, stickily.

I choked it effectively.

Now the integers integrate,

All the series correlate,

All the factors escalate.

And

Two = a complex number.

When the equation balances,

The formula replicates. Replicates.

The pillows are dry;

The vow, once given,

Cannot unravel, it loops.

Love eschewed, a cycle.

Freedom lives in freedom,

It inhabits the mind.

Now

Two = an imaginary number.

He flickers at first

Parenthetical on my periphery,

This piece of Greek.

I ignore, obdurately ignore,

Turn my pillow, collude

With its cool, but.

The random pattern entrances.

So

Two = a real number.

I carry the bracketed

Cluster of symbols, allow

The additional clause. Arcane

Words and pillows dissolve,

Sequences converge, joy multiplies.

The mesmerise is infinite.

Yes.

Two = a prime number.

This poem was first published in The Weary Blues journal by New Binary Press in December 2013. It was my first publication.